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By now, Sesame Street promoting Pride Month is about as surprising as Cookie Monster eating cookies. The show has spent years drifting away from teaching letters, numbers, and basic childhood lessons in favor of broader social messaging.
So its latest rainbow-filled post barely qualifies as news these days. What strikes me is not that they keep doing it. Instead, it’s how many people accept the idea that children’s television should help shape a child’s worldview in the first place.
Happy #PrideMonth from Sesame Street! Join us in celebrating and uplifting the LGBTQIA+ members of our community. ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜 pic.twitter.com/kO9TAhnqDE
— Sesame Street (@sesamestreet) June 1, 2026
Sesame Street framed its latest Pride message around love, inclusion, and uplifting others. Fine. Nobody is going to argue that children should grow up mean.
At what point did a television show about puppets, cookies, and the letter B decide it should help shape a child’s worldview? The latest Pride post did not appear out of nowhere. Sesame Street has been heading down this road for years.
The thing that always strikes me about these conversations is how quickly people hide behind words like love and inclusion, as if that ends the discussion.
Of course people should be treated with kindness.
Most parents already teach that.
Most grandparents already teach that.
What Sesame Street never seems willing to acknowledge is that this stopped being about simple kindness a long time ago.
The show’s latest Pride Month post did not come out of nowhere. A few years ago Sesame Street introduced a family with two dads and celebrated it as a milestone. Since then, the rainbow-themed messaging has become a regular feature. That is their choice. What puzzles me is why so many people pretend this is just another lesson about sharing and being nice.
It is not.
Sesame Street is actively teaching children how to think about viewing certain social issues.
The most revealing part of Sesame Street’s latest Pride post is not the rainbow graphic. It’s the assumption hiding underneath it. Why is this the job of Sesame Street in the first place?
The show was created to help preschoolers learn letters, numbers, colors, and basic social skills. But then, many organizations stopped seeing themselves as providers of a service and started seeing themselves as teachers of values.
Whether it is schools, corporations, social media companies, or children’s entertainment, there seems to be a growing belief that raising children requires a whole network of institutions helping shape how they think. Hence, the word grooming enters the chat.
Call me old-fashioned, but I still think families should get first crack at those conversations.
Last year, when all this stuff sprang up in June like it always has, I decided to help teach my then 3-year-old grandson about the rainbow and what it really means.
I told him the rainbow represented God’s promise after the flood. We brought out his toddler Bible and talked about Noah, the ark, and why rainbows appear after storms. It wasn’t some grand teaching moment. It was simply a conversation between a grandmother and her grandson. I passed along the lessons I learned from my grandmother and from church, just as generations before me had done.
About a week later, when I saw my grandson again, I decided to ask him if he remembered what the rainbow meant. Without hesitation, he answered, “God’s promise.” I will admit that made this Shug’s heart happy. Yes, he calls me Shug.
As Pride Month gets started, never forget that the LGBT crowd stole the rainbow and put in on their flag.
The rainbow was God’s promise to never flood the Earth again LONG BEFORE it was hijacked by a sinful group of people that perverted its meaning. pic.twitter.com/eZ2cv1OMys
— AmericanPapaBear™ (@AmericaPapaBear) June 1, 2026
The conversation lasted only a few minutes, but he remembered it. I passed along what I learned from my grandmother and from church, just as families have done for generations.
That is the job of families.
Not Sesame Street.
There was a time when the biggest controversy on Sesame Street involved whether Bert and Ernie were roommates.
Now the show rolls into Pride Month like a corporate HR department armed with rainbow graphics and talking points.
I don’t remember parents demanding more political guidance from puppets, but here we are.
And I wonder if Big Bird and his crew will be just as enthusiastic next month when America begins celebrating its 250th birthday. I suspect we won’t be seeing quite as many red, white, and blue colored social media graphics for that occasion.
Either way, Sesame Street seems increasingly convinced it has an important role to play in shaping children’s beliefs. That would be less annoying if children did not already come equipped with parents, grandparents, churches, communities, and actual families.
At some point, the giant yellow bird started doing entirely too much.
Feature Image: Big Bird/Flickr/LBJ Library/License: Public Domain/edited in Canva Pro
Tim says: Now if a Sesame Street character tried explaining the origin of the rainbow as you did to your grandson, I’m sure everyone would be just fine with it/.
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